One of my friends — well, it doesn’t really matter how it happened. But we talked about our smile lines for a moment.

This entry is already beginning in a way that I dislike. I’ve halted, stuttered and stopped and nothing about the way that I write seems to flow anymore. But it doesn’t matter, not right now, I’ll acknowledge my shame in my weakening craft later.

I looked into the mirror and I wasn’t exactly sure who I saw. I recognize the face, the lines of my jaw and the soft, dark skin under my eyes. Though there’s nothing particularly spectacular about the blue of my irises, I’ve realized that those dark pupils had weight. They were pitch black irons, and to me it was like seeing through an immeasurable ocean to a dark anchor resting on white sand below.

What boat bobs on those unsettled waves, tethered there, I do not know.

All I know that is she has proved sea worthy so far. The creaks of her wooden planes do not pitch high, as they did when new lumber would be under pressure. This noise has grown seasoned, and groans throughout the entire vessel. There have been places that her sails have been patched, and a great many causes and their flags had been pulled up to display. She has had more than her share of salt crusted, sodden white sheets pulled up in surrender. The sound those flags make during a storm, when they droop with the weight of water and slap the rigging is northing short of terrifying.

No flag snaps crisp in the air now, she is a vessel that is waiting for the captain to catch a breath.